In Stephen Harper’s New©™ Canada, the government will be a mean, lean, fighting machine.
It will service the profit-making interests of corporations who own and exploit Canada’s natural resources and it will collect taxes from the schmucks paying for the privilege of living here.
In this Canada, accounting is the New©™ accountability.
You’re either a member of the Ethical©™ oligarchy: in the black with the Conservative winners or you’re in the red with the losers.
Canada’s assets will be military equipment such as the F-35s, its liabilities our burned-out vets, used up and discarded.
The Canada Pension Plan an asset which belongs to Canadians who paid their contributions, will be dismantled and its funds dissipated by the hyenas and vultures employed by the Conservative party.
Speaking at an event at the Manning Institute Conference, Human Resources Minister Diane Finley declared:
“… millions of taxpayer dollars are spent annually on such social issues as poverty, often without substantial improvements. The federal government can no longer afford to continue spending money on the same old approaches and expect to achieve better results, she said.
“Governments can’t do everything to meet our social challenges. Governments can’t simply fund every demanded service without regard for the taxpayers’ ability to pay,” Finley said in her speech at the Manning Networking Conference, which has Conservatives from across the country in the nation’s capital. “Governments can, however, facilitate and empower others to deal with social challenges.” The Conservative government is considering a number of alternatives when it comes to the “social economy.”
She said one is “pay-for-performance agreements” in which federal dollars are only paid when clear tar-gets are met. Such an approach would have the private sector more involved in addressing social challenges and delivering innovative solutions, she said.
Another option the Conservatives are considering, she said, is what are known as social impact bonds.
They are essentially a contract between the government and private investors that provide upfront government capital to finance an organization – often a not-for-profit agency – to deliver a social program. The federal cash is tied to results, so the government will pay the investor an agreed premium and the original investment only if the agreed out-comes are achieved, she said.
Such bonds would transfer the financial risk away from the government and taxpayer – who pay for services now without any guarantee of results – to the social group that will be paid for results, Finley said.
“Our approach will be incremental, it will be respectful of the government’s fiscal situation. The government cannot afford to do everything and we will need to leverage if we’re going to have maximum impact,” she added, promising the government will still take care of the vulnerable. “We’re not relinquishing any of our responsibilities. What we are doing is creating more space and more freedom.”
I do hope those prisons built to accommodate all the criminals sentenced, under Harper’s New©™ Canada, provide internet connectivity. It will be my lifeline to the outside world, as I fully expect that is where I will eventually reside, having exhausted the wondrous possibilities of more space and more freedom created by Finley and her crooked Conservative colleagues.